Richard Ely was the founder of the American Economic Association and a major figure within the Progressive movement, a figure worthy of the careful study that Luigi Bradizza gives him in Richard T. Ely’s Critique of Capitalism. Bradizza offers a thorough critique of the substance of and normative justification for Ely’s economic theory, which aimed to create a “golden mean” between capitalism and socialism. Through that critique, Bradizza offers a broader discussion of some theoretical deficiencies within progressivism. By highlighting the weaknesses within progressivism, he hopes to establish the theoretical superiority of the Founders, in particular the privileged place they grant to Lockean property rights, which, he claims, were supplanted by progressivism in both the theory and practice of American life. While his discussion of Ely is frequently informative and insightful, his larger effort to assert the intellectual supremacy of the Founders’ economic theory underwhelms. There may be a case to be made in favor of his position, but it is not made here.

There is much to recommend about Bradizza’s analysis of Ely’s thought. He offers a clear and detailed overview of Ely’s economic philosophy, the relationship between his thoughts on self-development and the appropriation of property (the latter is justified by the need for the former), and the normative grounding for redistribution located within Ely’s social gospel, Christianity. He rightly points out the need for a robust critique of Ely’s ideas, raising several important criticisms. There is tension between the class conflict that follows any attempt at redistribution and the importance of social unity within his thought. Ely seeks to escape this conflict by making that redistribution an act of altruism rather than coercion, and Bradizza offers some interesting discussions regarding the ambition and limitations of the social gospel and Ely’s conviction that social sciences are the key to unlocking the millennium. Likewise, Bradizza argues that the materialistic focus behind redistribution often serves to undermine the higher ends of self-development, and he explores the implications of reducing democratic politics to apolitical administration.

The author believes that these critiques of progressivism can resurrect the Lockean liberalism of the founders: “It is the thesis of this book that Ely’s progressivism generated significant political and economic problems for our polity, and therefore we should reconsider our abandonment of the principles of the Founding” (p. 17). If Ely fails, Bradizza argues, then so does the entire reform tradition running from progressivism through the New Deal and into the present day. Have the principles of the Founding been abandoned? That is an extremely provocative claim, for which Bradizza offers little support. But there is an even larger problem with reducing progressivism to Ely. Bradizza locates the heart of Ely’s progressivism in his teleological goal of “the comprehensive and maximal individual development of all” (p. 25). Although this was a concern of many progressives, it was hardly the heart of the movement, and there is little justification for Ely as a test case, as opposed to other progressives like John Dewey—or, better yet, Herbert Croly, whose efforts to appropriate the Founders for the progressives would seem to make him a better choice for Bradizza’s comparison.

Nor is it clear that the fractious and divided progressives could agree on the core of progressivism themselves. Different progressives highlighted different concerns: the creation of national community, provision of economic security, enhancement of autonomy, constraint on the excesses of capitalism, and the purification of the polity. In fact, all that may unite progressivism is a desire to respond to the broad social dislocation caused by the transition to a modern industrial society and a general faith in the problem-solving ability of apolitical expertise. Although Bradizza argues that “[a]ny failures of [Ely’s] own specific economic theories resulted in, not the abandonment of the progressive project, but instead the adoption of alterative, non-Institutional approaches that carried on the reform efforts” (p. 13), there is scant discussion of progressivism outside of Ely, and major texts like Eldon Eisenach’s The Lost Promise of Progressivism (1994) and Robert Wiebe’s The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1966) are not even listed in the bibliography.

This thin understanding of progressivism weakens the force of Bradizza’s argument, and there are similar issues with his discussion of the Founding. Here, at least, he recognizes that the meaning of the American Founding is highly contested, highlighting no fewer than seven interpretive schema. But they are never discussed, and he settles quickly on the notion that the essence of the Founding is the creation of a “small, republican, and limited government that protects life, liberty, and property”—especially property (p. 18). This is done without reference to the historical context of the Founding, the debates that defined it, or the divisions that followed it.

Although Bradizza is dismissive of and seeks “[l]iberation from Ely’s historicism” (p. 149), historicism is not disproven by willing away history. He views both progressivism and the Founding as theoretical abstractions, despite their political and politicized nature and the way this influenced the respective theories. There is no discussion, for instance, of the class conflict that marked the Founding era and lingered throughout America’s preprogressive history. Progressivism, in turn, was not an idle intellectual exercise, nor was it a solution in search of a cause. Progressive theory was a response to the social dislocation and disruptions caused by modern capitalism, and the failure of the Lockean order to respond in a way that spoke to the actual experience of millions of Americans. Bradizza’s conclusion that “the more broad minded, rational, self-interest to which Madison appealed could harmonize the classes, with all seeking prosperity within a regime of private property, equal opportunity, and equality under the law” (p. 154) is groundless without reference to history.

In fact, Bradizza’s work is full of highly contestable foundational assumptions that the author takes as a given. He displays a curious blindness to the potentially arbitrary nature of economic power. He ignores the extent to which modern capitalism bears little relationship to the way in which the Founders understood and experienced it. He dismisses progressive concerns about the economic consequences of inequality by arguing that America’s relative poor, if not “absolutely poor, are not necessarily inherently harmed by their condition” (p. 14). He does not seriously address a claim central to progressive thought, including Ely’s, that capital is socially created and therefore capable of legitimate social expropriation. Bradizza accepts the basic premise of supply-side economics as a given, despite the fact that it is hardly settled opinion within the field of economics. The New Deal is repeatedly dismissed as a failure with minimal comment or discussion.

As such, a valuable opportunity to investigate some fundamental assumptions of a certain strand of progressive thought is somewhat squandered by Bradizza’s treatment of controversial assumptions as self-evident and by an overly abstract analysis of two eras of American history when theory was deeply influenced by context and practice. There is potential value here, but it is undermined by the poorly defended ideological project of the book.